In dealing with individuals, only individual understanding will do. We need a different language for every patient.
from Jung, C. G. (1965). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Vintage.
Carl Jung on Individuals and Psychotherapy
Category: Language and Poetry
Bessel van der Kolk on the “Pseudocertainties” of Psychiatric Diagnoses
Our great teacher [at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center], Elvin Semrad, actively discouraged us from reading psychiatry textbooks during our first year [of training]. Semrad did not want our perceptions of reality to become obscured by the pseudocertainties of psychiatric diagnoses.
I remember asking him once: “What would you call this patient — schizophrenic or schizoaffective?” He paused and stroked his chin, apparently deep in thought.
“I think I’d call him Michael McIntyre,” he replied.
from Van der Kolk, B. A. (2015). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books.
“This Jungian Life” Podcast: The Music of Metaphor
Metaphors transfer meaning between domains of experience.
To understand and engage another’s internal world requires language which speaks in harmony with the unconscious. Metaphor speaks beyond ego and traverses the realms between past and present, bodily sensation and feeling, conscious and unconscious. It infuses lived experience with connection and creates shared space for healing.
[Carl Gustav] Jung says, “Whoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices; he enthralls and overpowers, while at the same time he lifts the idea he is seeking to express out of the occasional and the transitory into the realm of the ever-enduring.”
from Stewart, D., Marchiano, L., & Lee, J. (2021, August 26). Episode 178 – The Music of Metaphor: Healing in Therapy & Life – This Jungian Life.
Matthew M. Sholler, Psy.D. 
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